Ola Rondiak, a Ukrainian American artist who was displaced from Kyiv earlier this year by Russia's invasion, recently opened a solo exhibition in New York City made up of new work highlighting the strength and resilience of Ukraine's women.
The exhibit includes her recent acrylic collages and charcoal drawings such as the "War Woman" series of portraits, created in response to the suffering caused by the ongoing war and with an eye toward healing. A portion of the proceeds from sales of the pieces will benefit a Ukrainian charity.
A U.S.-born daughter of Ukrainian immigrants, Rondiak, 55, had been based in Kyiv for more than 25 years prior to the invasion.
Following the launch of Russia's military campaign in late February, she was unable to return home from a trip to the United States, while her husband Petro, 56, fled Kyiv on foot and crossed into Romania.
Amid the conflict, some 150 works by the artist were left behind in her Kyiv studio.
Rondiak's latest artwork draws on a family history intertwined with war and upheaval on Ukrainian soil, as well as the practice of using art as a form of resistance.
During the reign of Joseph Stalin in the former Soviet Union, Rondiak's maternal grandmother was arrested by the secret police and sentenced to 25 years in a labor camp as part of the state's repression of Ukrainian intellectuals and nationalists.
In defiance of prison rules, she embroidered religious icons using fish bones as needles and threads from her clothing. The pieces were successfully smuggled out of the Soviet Union following Stalin's death, after an amnesty that ended her prison sentence at just under a decade.
Describing war as a destroyer of culture, Rondiak said she wants her work to highlight the importance and necessity of freedom as well as the strength of women in the face of Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
"Ola Rondiak: Women's History, A Hundred Years of Ukraine," is on display in Manhattan at The Gallery by Odo through June 25.
